


everyone falls for the sunshine disguise

by lettersfromnowhere



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon, Sprinkles of Airbender Ty Lee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27495460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: Ty Lee figures out where she fits in this post-war world, and learns a few things about herself, her world, and her own heart in the process.
Relationships: Aang & Ty Lee (Avatar), Kyoshi Warriors & Ty Lee, Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 64





	everyone falls for the sunshine disguise

**Author's Note:**

> The world needs more Ty Lee content. Naturally, then, I used this "Ty Lee learns self-acceptance" oneshot as an excuse to do some self-projecting.

Ty Lee loves freely, and often.

Everybody knows that. She’s the sort of girl who always seems as if she’s trying to outshine the sun, and half the time it works. That comes naturally to her and it isn’t hard to pretend to find the good in the world when she just _does._ She lives as if life is a series of bright sides to find. At least, that’s what she’s been able to convince everyone.

It isn’t hard to pretend: Ty Lee loves freely, and often. It isn’t hard to wring every little droplet of joy out of every last sunrise and embrace and meal and romance scroll when she really feels it. The world really does hold endless joy, she thinks, and she finds it. She _loves_ it.

Ty Lee loves freely, and often. What no one sees behind the brightness of her smile is the years it takes for Ty Lee to extend that love to herself.

* * *

She heads for Kyoshi Island after the war, unsure if she’ll even like it. But she tries, because she believes in fresh starts, and even if she’s not quite sure why, Ty Lee knows that’s just what she needs now. Something is _off,_ and she doesn’t know what it is, and she’s pretty sure she won’t find the answers she needs in the Fire Nation. Of course, she’d never admit it. The whole world is celebrating, and even though she knows deep down that she is not, she’d never dream of ruining that for her…

Her _what?_ They’re not really friends, certainly not family. At best, her new sisters – it feels so _wrong_ to call them that, so _off,_ but she doesn’t dare not to – are acquaintances. Suki’s optimistic that, in time, she’ll fit in like the missing piece of a puzzle that Ty Lee is certain is already complete, but no one has any illusions about how it’s going to be for now. The Kyoshi Warriors invited her in, and she’ll always be grateful for that. But they are wary; she catches their sidelong glances often, and she always has to turn her face to hide the embarrassed flush in her cheeks.

Ty Lee plays the role of the airhead with aplomb, but she’s not stupid. She knows what those looks mean. And she knows, deep down where she doesn’t want to acknowledge that thoughts still sprout like weeds in the pitch-dark, that they matter to her somehow. It takes her a few weeks of polite distance from the other warriors to name the reason.

It’s not fear or sadness that she feels in the pit of her stomach when the girls who are supposed to be her sisters look at her like that. Those would make sense; they have every reason not to trust her, and she has every reason to regret that they don’t. But it’s neither of those things; the feeling she finally puts a name to is much more insidious.

She meets their wary eyes through layers of white paint, and that thing that she feels in the pit of her stomach is cold, slimy _guilt._

* * *

Ty Lee recognizes other feelings only after they fade away. Loneliness is one. She knows it was there when the Kyoshi Warriors realize that she can be trusted; it is the warmth of their smiles – real ones, not cautiously faked like they were before – and their encouragement and their invitations to go swimming or stargazing that show her how cold she’d felt before, without even knowing it. She never thought she’d be happy as part of a matched set, but this isn’t like home. She doesn’t disappear into a see of identical faces here.

Here, every painted girl is known by name, and by the thousand other identifiers that come with knowing someone. Ty Lee knows that Aoma is from Omashu, and that Nara loves fire flakes a little too much, and Rinoki is afraid of storms. She’s learned that Yeri wanted to be a hatmaker when she was growing up and that Ailan has a different crush every two weeks. And they know that she is one of seven identical sisters, and that she was in the circus, and that she’s a chi-blocker. She knows, and is known. It should be wonderful.

But something is missing, still, and she can’t figure out what it is.

She tosses and turns most nights, trying not to think. But that’s the problem with her thoughts: they’re not as vapid and infrequent as everyone assumes they are, and when they want to surface, they will. Late at night, when she least wants their company, questions race through her mind, and she never wants to answer them. She would rather not know why she still feels so uneasy here when she’s beginning to love her sisters-in-arms so much, or why she can’t look at the Kyoshi Warriors without that awful guilty twisting in her stomach. All Ty Lee wants is to shove down those shadowy thoughts and let the sun come out again.

But it won’t, of course. When it disappears behind the clouds, no act of her own will can bring it back out. So she does her best to ignore it – artificial sunshine is better than this looming bank of clouds, she figures. She has a smile waiting for everyone she passes, and an encouraging word for every chi-blocking student. She watches the sun rise over the island every morning, and it is always beautiful. She tells herself, when she applies her makeup, to be proud of what she’s a part of. For once, she is a part of something that is _good:_ not stifling, like her family; not merely for show, like the circus; not ill-intentioned, like their trio during the war. It should be her greatest achievement, being accepted here. It should make her happy.

Really, happiness shouldn’t be hard. Ty Lee _loves_ to be happy – she’ll find any excuse to convince herself that she is. After all, her whole being seems to resist sadness as if it’s the opposite end of a magnet. She feels _wrong_ when she’s sad. If she can’t find happiness, she’ll create it, grit her teeth and force herself to be happy through willpower alone. So she’s not sure why she can’t do that here, with so many reasons to be happy.

She can’t, though. She can’t manufacture happiness. She can’t tell herself that she’s happy here even if she loves it, paradox that that is. And as the days wear on, she feels as cold and sluggish as she ever has, and it’s not long before she can’t take it anymore.

It’s a foggy, overcast morning when her sisters see her off at the dock, and they seem almost sad to see her go. Ty Lee blinks back tears as she waves from the deck of the ship. The weather seems cruelly fitting, and she wants nothing more than to retreat below deck and curl up in a bunk. But she forces herself to stay, and keep her eyes on the warriors waving her off from the dock.

As it always does, it takes her a while to realize why the sight cut so deeply.

* * *

She heads for the capital city, unsure where else to go. It’ll be nice to see Mai, she figures. After all, she _loves_ Mai. Maybe Mai’s company is the thing that she’s been missing all this time, she speculates. A familiar face – not that those of the Kyoshi Warriors aren’t familiar now, but an _old_ familiar face – might do her good.

(Deep down, she’s actually confident that it won’t. But she ignores that hunch as studiously as all the other reasons not to be happy.)

They’re all happy to see her when she arrives, of course. Mai won’t say it, but she consents to a hug, which lets Ty Lee know that she’s missed her, too. She’s invited to dinner at the palace twice; Zuko’s friends are still, apparently, sticking around, save for the non-bender boy whose name she can’t recall, and they’re welcoming enough. The Avatar, in particular, seems to enjoy her company, and, when she manages to shove down the cold, slimy sensation she now knows is guilt, she does, too. He’s fun-loving and affectionate and optimistic, and she sees a great deal of herself in him. And he’s _interested_ in her with an intensity that catches her off-guard. She wonders, for a while, if he has a crush on her.

Then he asks her what she knows about the Air Nomads, and she realizes pretty soon after that why he’s so interested.

It’s plausible, she knows, that she could have an airbender in her ancestry. Her eyes are Air Nomad grey, after all, and she’s never paid enough attention to things as silly as rank and file to know who her ancestors are. It would explain her agility and lightness on her feet. When Aang asks, she simply nods, and agrees to meditate with him because she has no real reason to say no.

The idea gives her pause, though, and she quickly realizes why.

* * *

She makes the mistake of researching the Air Nomads in as much detail as she can after that. No one but Aang knows of her suspicions; they learn quickly, though, after Mai finds her curled up against a set of shelves in the palace library, head in her hands and muffled sobs still glaringly audible in the silence.

She asks what’s wrong. Ty Lee doesn’t tell her.

That, Ty Lee realizes, is a turning point, that choice not to tell Mai why she’s crying. Normally she’d share everything with Mai. But she knows somehow that Mai’s not the person to tell. She wouldn’t _get_ it. Mai wouldn’t understand the way the cold, slimy guilt she’s been beating down for the last few months covers her whole body now, so thick and heavy that she cannot move under its weight. She loves Mai, but she knows that Mai isn’t one to question what she’s told; she’d probably think Ty Lee was being dramatic, call her a bleeding-heart and call it a day.

She wouldn’t get how Ty Lee’s heart really _is_ bleeding.

So she doesn’t tell her. Of course, Mai still figures it out quickly: it’s hard not to when she sees the scroll lying open on the floor next to her friend. So she picks it up, frowns, rolls it up and deposits it in its storage slot with a stern warning to Ty Lee not to read such depressing things when she knows they’ll upset her.

Again, Ty Lee doesn’t say anything. She wants to let out all of the scary, unpleasant feelings she tries so hard to bury, but nothing can get past the wall of her guilt. She wants to yell, rail against her best friend for being so unfeeling, for refusing to bear the burden of guilt with her. She wants to hate herself and everyone else in this entire wretched country for the things they’ve done. But she can’t do any of that. Anger and resentment aren’t in her nature, but neither is the kind of inner strength it takes to stand under the weight of the sins of the past.

_Weak._ That’s all she can think as she cries into the fabric of her leggings. _Weak, and reprehensible._ She’s never been so ashamed to be a Fire National because she _knew_ these things, of course, but not the extent of them – not how responsible she should feel for them.

Mai would tell her not to feel that way. “You weren’t there,” she’d say. But Ty Lee knows better than that. She believed every lie she was told, she joined Azula, she conquered Ba Sing Se in the name of a nation whose entire history she now wishes she could spit on.

Mai crouches next to her, hand on her shoulder, and doesn’t ask any more questions. And it’s only the weight of her guilt that keeps Ty Lee from swatting her hand away.

* * *

When the weight lifts enough to let her stand, Ty Lee makes for the Avatar’s rooms immediately. She gets no shortage of strange looks as she frantically knocks at his door, but Aang doesn’t seem surprised when he opens it. “Ty Lee?” he asks, a little confused but plainly happy to see here. “What’s up?”

The obvious pleasure in his voice at seeing her makes Ty Lee sick to her stomach.

She doesn’t even say anything before she reaches out her arms, and as soon as he extends his in kind, she sags into them, every ounce of her strength drained away. She’s crying not five seconds later, and Aang stiffens, unsure what how to respond.

“Ty Lee?” he tries again. “What’s wrong?”

She murmurs what feels like a thousand incoherent apologies in the space between one breath and the next. She’s holding on so tightly that she’s shocked he can still breathe, but Aang doesn’t seem to mind. He rests his chin atop her head and sighs.

“What are you apologizing for, exactly?” he asks. “If it’s about Appa-“

“What am I _apologizing for?”_ Ty Lee’s voice pitches wildly upwards with incredulity. “You don’t _know?”_

“Um, no?” Aang still seems concerned with this development. “I don’t. You haven’t exactly done anything-“

“What _haven’t_ I done?” she sobs, and he seems to get it now. He holds her just a little tighter as she cries, and Ty Lee _wants_ to run because she knows all too well that she does not deserve this kindness, but she can’t bring herself to leave.

(She later learns that Mai had mentioned the incident in the library to Zuko, who mentioned it to…someone, she can’t remember who, who’d mentioned it to Aang, but right now she does not know that and he seems all but telepathic. That alone makes her want to stay.)

“None of that is your fault, Ty Lee.” _Yes it is._ “That was a long time ago.” _And what difference does that make?_ “And I know you’re a good person.” _Why are you telling me this?_ “You shouldn’t-“

“I’m sorry,” she chokes, even though it’s so inadequate an apology that it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. “I’m so, so _sorry.”_

He doesn’t have any rebuttals to that, and she’s not sure whether to be relieved or upset.

“You don’t really need it,” he starts after a moment, “but if it makes you feel any better, I forgive you.”

Her shoulders shake with a fresh round of tears, and he doesn’t let go, and she is undeserving and she has never felt more broken but she is so, so grateful.

Guilt still crawls up her throat and keeps her paralyzed sometimes, but at least his warmth burns away a little of the cold.

* * *

She goes back to Kyoshi Island, after all. She hadn’t been sure that she ever would, but now she knows that she has to. As paltry as it is, this is her chance to atone. Everyone’s happy to see her again, but she doesn’t find herself particularly concerned with the warm welcome.

Listless sadness has given way to all-consuming guilt and now that’s burned off into determination, simmering low in her gut. This, she decides, is how she makes it up to the Earth Kingdom. It’s too late to do anything for the Air Nomads, though she maintains a reliable correspondence with Aang that’s as much a strange form of atonement as it is the maintenance of a friendship. So this is what she can do: where once she’d breached the walls of Ba Sing Se, she now defends them, at least in spirit. 

It feels almost like poetic justice.

She doesn’t really think about it much anymore, but Ty Lee’s not so afraid of being unhappy anymore. Maybe it’s the guilt, or maybe she’s just used to the listless malcontent she’s spent the last several years languishing in, but she no longer finds herself forcing the sun through the clouds as often. She shies from sadness sometimes, but not the way she used to. She can name her guilt and isolation now. She doesn’t _like_ them, and, if given the choice, she turns her face to the sun. But it is hard to know what she knows now and think of only happy things.

And it is because of that that Ty Lee can comfortably say, now, that almost none of the love she lavishes so easily on others has been saved for herself.

Ty Lee’s never really given much credence to the thought that the way she sees herself might take its cues from how others see her. But here on Kyoshi Island, it’s one she has to consider.

Here, her sisters – she can truly call them that name now, she thinks – don’t seem to see the her past mistakes anymore. They don’t see the former Princess’ faithful companion, or the conqueror of Ba Sing Se, or the one-in-seven girl who never had anything of her own. Perhaps they once did, but they don’t seem to anymore. They wave to her when she passes, and they laugh at her jokes even when she doesn’t mean to make them. She starts to feel like _one_ of them. The happiness she finds in that acceptance isn’t as bright or warm as the pure, untainted happiness she’s managed to force upon herself all her life, but its gentle warmth is at least enough to dispel some of the coldness of guilt.

She knows now that she doesn’t _need_ that artificial sunshine anymore, but it takes months to realize why: Ty Lee has always needed to falsify her own happiness because without that warmth, she would’ve had none.

Her family had felt more like the circus some days than the circus had, and she’d found no warmth in the constant jockeying for attention that she’d been forced to partake in. The friendships of her childhood had depended upon her performance, and as much as she’d loved them, she’d known somewhere in the back of her mind that she’d lose Azula’s esteem if she stepped out of line. The circus had been exciting, and that had been where it was easiest to convince herself that she was happy, but it felt empty, in some way she couldn’t quite define. The sharp edges of her childhood friendships hadn’t dulled in the slightest by the time they began their hunt for the Avatar. In all of those places she’d known loneliness and guilt and fear that she could not name, and she feared the feelings that lurked beneath the sunshine of her demeanor. She was afraid to suffer, and it was easier to do it if she forced herself to forget that she already was.

Here, she does not suffer anymore.

It’s the strangest thing. Ty Lee has always been so careful not to let unpleasant feelings slip past her defenses, fearful that she’ll break under their weight if she does. But now that they have – those Air Nomad scrolls, that day in the library, were the point of no return, and she cannot pretend that she is blissfully, ignorantly happy anymore – she finds that she can. She has always, _always_ thought she was the weak one, and she has carefully blocked out anything heavy or difficult since she was young, afraid even before she realized why that such things would break her.

But she’s had to learn to live with them, and now she sees that her fears might only have been founded when she had to carry the weight of her heartaches alone.

She has real friends now. She doesn’t exactly try to open up, but she knows that if she wanted to, her sisters-in-arms would be there to listen to her. She loves them as easily as she’s loved anyone, but where that love had been the self-coerced love of a girl who feared the loss of that love’s return, this love is whole and genuine. She has her sisters’ backs and they have hers; they do not hold her past against her, and she does not hold their initial suspicion against them.

It’s the strangest thing. She’s given up on her façade of ceaseless positivity, but she isn’t suffering, and she hasn’t broken. She’s lost nothing but the constant strain of keeping up a front in letting go. And she’s _happy._

She didn’t even know it was possible, but here, accepted in and accepting of all of her mess and mistakes without artifice, she is happier than she has ever been.

* * *

It has been three years, but there are still days when the guilt and grief bear down. That’s something Ty Lee has had to learn, too: happiness is imperfect; happiness does not lead to the absence of the unpleasant feelings she’s learned to live with but still does not favor. She can be happy and still have unhappy days. Sometimes she wishes she could retreat back into that old, easy mindset of unblemished happiness, for it is more appealing than this happiness-with-conditions, but she doesn’t.

She knows, _finally,_ that she is strong enough.

That’s tested when she’s a little past seventeen, though, in Ba Sing Se. When Suki had mentioned that the Earth King had requested a squadron of Kyoshi Warriors for his personal protection at an upcoming diplomatic meeting, Ty Lee had jumped at the chance to go: here was her opportunity for atonement. But she hadn’t thought about how it might feel to be back within these walls, wearing the uniform in earnest which she’d once worn as a disguise.

(She thinks that it’s a little too apt: she’d worn her bright optimism as easily as she’d donned this uniform back when she and Azula and Mai had infiltrated this city, and now she wears both authentically. It’s a whimsical thought that she doesn’t have much time for, but she likes the way it rhymes.)

It’s almost a curse, the way everyone welcomes her back to a city that should hate her. True, it’s possible that they don’t know who she is under her makeup, but she feels as if she should be pelted with fruit, not shown to a room in the guest wing of the palace. She’s sharing a room with Meihua, a fellow Kyoshi Warrior a few years her senior, and all she can talk about for hours is the spaciousness of the closets and the softness of the pillows and the view out the window, but Ty Lee finds it hard to care.

Every time she looks out that window and over the city walls, cold fingers of guilt clamp around her heart, and she can’t shake them off.

She is strong enough to stand under that weight now, but it takes a kind of letting-go that she still isn’t fond of. She can’t cling to the façade of her own happiness when she knows it won’t hold up, because if it breaks, so will she. Artificial sunshine is a fragile, fickle thing. So she lets her face fall and her shoulders slump. She lets herself grieve for her choices and those of her nation, and where she needs forgiveness, she seeks it – whether from others or from within.

But she does not shove away those feelings anymore, convincing herself that she is happy. Those days are gone with the conviction that she lacks the strength to suffer.

* * *

Apparently, the change in Ty Lee is noticeable.

It begins in the the fifth year of her tenure on Kyoshi Island. After years of ribbing from her charges, Suki is _finally_ to be married, and with the occasion come guests, many of whom she has not seen in years. She’s happiest to see Mai, though they are not as close as they once were; the way her eyebrows rise at the sight of her friend tells Ty Lee that something is decidedly different about her. And she is not the only one who notices. The Beifong girl lightly (well, sort of) punches her arm and tells her she “almost seems like a real person now” (Katara discreetly elbows her for that). The Water Tribe siblings – and Zuko, who seems to trail them everywhere – are perfectly friendly, as standoffish as all three had been in the past. Aang’s face lights up when he catches sight of her and she finds, strangely, that hers does the same.

It’s odd, being accepted this way, but she realizes with a funny fluttering sensation in her chest that she likes it. She likes catching up with people who, just a handful of years ago, probably wanted her dead. She likes sharing stories, and hearing about the work her friends – _friends?_ Can she call them that now? – have done since she came here. She doesn’t feel the overpowering weight of guilt when she hears about the rebuilding of the Southern Water Tribe, or Aang’s search for Air Nomad descendants in hiding (or, for that matter, his constant invitations to meditate). She just feels…

_Normal._

Maybe not _loved,_ but _accepted._

She’s never thought about it before but she wonders, as some unidentified hands pull her out onto the dance floor on the night of the wedding, if perhaps the love she’s always extended so freely to others might be something she could have for herself. She has spent so long feeling unworthy but knows, now, that others have found some way to love her; why should she not do the same?

And it really is the strangest thing, but even in the torchlit darkness, Ty Lee realizes that she doesn’t need to force the sun to shine.


End file.
